City 13 is located in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The location was easy to find and had plenty of parking available for guests. The building that City 13 is in is beautiful, and we could tell right away this wouldn’t have the “office building” feel that many escape rooms have. A spacious lobby, and extremely pleasant employees, greeted us as we entered. There were several couches, a pool table, several tables with chairs, a popcorn machine (free!), coffee maker (free!), and drinks for purchase. Additionally, they had merchandise for purchase. We were already impressed! The owner(s) explained to us that when they picked this location, they did so with the forethought of not wanting an office building feel but wanted to create an alternate reality where the entire time you are in City 13, it is an authentic experience. We were walked into our entry point to the city, briefed on our mission (in the absolute coolest briefing we’ve seen so far), and then walked through the streets of the city to the Armory.

The Armory was low level light with authentic looking props, no wear and tear, and within-theme set design. As we worked through the room, the quality remained high; from working tech, to authentic props, to the lack of lamination, we were impressed with the quality of this room. The high-quality props and authentic set design allowed us to become more immersed into the story and the room we were in. We also loved that the music was on, but not too loudly, so it enhanced the immersion rather than adding a distracting factor.

You may be wondering, sure the set design, immersion, and quality were great…but were the puzzles any good? We can tell you that there were a good variety of puzzles that allowed us to utilize all of our players’ strengths. Many puzzles required team work, and one even required us to “swap out” team members for fresh eyes—we loved this! In addition, the puzzles seemed to fit the theme well, and the room had a story throughout.

If you couldn’t tell from this review…we had a blast! This was the first room we completed at City 13, and we were not disappointed. The owners put their heart and soul into the room, and you could feel that they really wanted to create an authentic alternate reality for their escapers. We would recommend you go with at least a few people for this room, because it does require some team work!